Torture By MSDN

As might be expected, the gripes about Microsoft and its new product offerings centered on Vista are mounting up. Before we start working our way through those, however, I'd like to relate one reader's experience with the seemingly simple task of renewing his MSDN subscription, as it's a story that may help us put some of the other issues we'll be discussing in proper perspective. The reader first wrote me in De

As might be expected, the gripes about Microsoft and its new product offerings centered on Vista are mounting up. Before we start working our way through those, however, I'd like to relate one reader's experience with the seemingly simple task of renewing his MSDN subscription, as it's a story that may help us put some of the other issues we'll be discussing in proper perspective.

The reader first wrote me in December after seeing my "Rough Rollout for Redmond" story. "Boy, I sure shared your recent column on the poor customer trying to renew their software licenses with my organization's purchasing staff, Dell staff, and Microsoft MSDN program administration staff," the reader wrote. "We are at the end of a six-plus week effort to figure out and straighten out the renewal of my Universal MSDN subscription, which I have had for years. Trying to get it renewed and correctly listed under our enterprise license agreement turned out to be one of the most frustrating, laugh-riot experiences in purchasing I have ever been through."

The comedy of errors began when the reader tried ordering his MSDN renewal through Dell, which serves as the Microsoft reseller under his organization's volume license agreement. "For years I have been getting the full library of servers, toolkits, etc. that come with the Universal subscription," the reader wrote. "Dell was quoting me $750 for Visual Studio 2005 Professional Edition, which is not the equivalent of what I've been getting under my expiring MSDN subscription. According to this page, this edition doesn't even include the MSDN Library, which is unbelievable since you need that to install Visual Studio 2005. It is just the basic package for coding languages, with a developer edition of SQL server only."

The reader found that a premium MSDN "Team Edition" subscription package would provide him the equivalent tools that he was getting on his old subscription, but the quote on renewal pricing his Dell rep gave him for it almost gave him a heart attack. "I can get a three-year license to the Developer Team Edition for $3,147.89. For what it's worth, that is $1,000 more that $700 per year that I have been paying. I suppose the argument is we are 'moving up,' but the only move up is to the Team Edition server piece, and I'm not sure a small group like mine needs that. But the real $64K question is what if I have a second developer who does not have an existing license? What is it going to cost me then? $5,000 to $6,000? That is incredibly expensive licensing for access to a shared server product."